Direct answer first: in 2026 the EV chargepoint grant is open to renters and to people who own and live in flats — worth 75% of the cost of buying and installing a home charger, up to £500 per socket — plus, through a separate scheme, households with only on-street parking. Residential landlords have a parallel route for rental properties. If you own and live in a house with a driveway, there is no grant for you, whatever an older article promised. Both live schemes run until 31 March 2027.
That is the whole picture in a paragraph. The rest of this guide unpacks each rule, the arithmetic, and the parts that catch people out — sourced from GOV.UK rather than from secondhand summaries.
What the grant is worth now
The headline figure changed this year. On 1 April 2026 the government raised the EV chargepoint grant from £350 to £500 per socket, keeping the same structure: it pays 75% of the purchase and installation cost, or the cap, whichever is lower. The rise quietly made a lot of the internet wrong — if a page tells you £350, it has not been updated since spring, and it is fair to wonder what else on it is stale.
Per socket matters, too: the scheme is written per socket installed rather than per household.
Who qualifies
Three groups, each with conditions:
- Renters. If you rent your home and it has private off-street or allocated parking, you can use the grant towards a chargepoint. Expect to evidence the tenancy as part of the claim.
- Flat owner-occupiers. If you own and live in a flat with off-street or allocated parking, the same grant applies — this is the one route by which an owner-occupier still qualifies.
- Residential landlords. A parallel scheme lets landlords claim towards chargepoints at rental properties, raised to the same level in April 2026.
Two threads run through all of it. The parking must be genuinely private — off-street or allocated, with no cable crossing public ground — and there is paperwork: evidence of tenancy or lease and an eligible vehicle, gathered during the claim rather than after it. The claim itself is routed through an OZEV-authorised installer, which is why the honest sequence is to raise the grant at quote stage and have your eligibility confirmed before any figures are agreed.
Who doesn’t qualify — and why the confusion persists
Owner-occupiers of single-occupancy houses are not eligible. The scheme that once covered them closed years ago, but its ghost lives on in old blog posts, out-of-date comparison sites and the occasional optimistic sales pitch. The result is a steady stream of homeowners who arrive at quote stage expecting £350 or £500 off and find the rules moved on without them. It also muddies comparison shopping: two quotes can appear £500 apart when the real difference is one installer wrongly assuming a grant applies.
Our position is the boring, truthful one: if you own and live in a house with a driveway, budget for the full cost of the installation. What actually determines that cost — the cable route, your consumer unit, your main fuse — is set out in our guide to EV charger installation costs, and none of it is improved by pretending a grant exists.
The on-street route: newer, and worth knowing
The genuinely new development is for households with no off-street parking at all. A separate grant offers up to £500 towards a chargepoint installed together with an approved cross-pavement solution — a gully set into the pavement that carries the charging cable safely beneath it, so the cable never lies across public ground.
It is a clever fix, and for some terraced streets it makes home charging possible for the first time. It is also not universal: the pavement works need your council’s approval, and geometry — the distance from your parking spot to your property — decides whether a gully is workable at all. It is honestly not viable for every street, and anyone selling it as such is overpromising. Ask, and expect a straight answer either way.
The arithmetic, worked through
The 75%-or-cap structure rewards a moment with a calculator:
- £400 installation: 75% is £300 — below the cap, so the grant pays £300 and you pay £100.
- £600 installation: 75% is £450 — still below the cap; you pay £150.
- £667 and above: 75% now meets or exceeds £500, so the grant flattens at the £500 maximum and you pay everything above it.
The practical reading: on modest installations the grant covers the substantial majority of the job, and the percentage — not just the £500 headline — is what protects claimants on smaller quotes. Always ask for the quote to show the price before and after the grant, so the deduction is visible rather than vaguely promised.
How the money actually moves
You do not apply for this grant yourself and wait for a cheque. The claim is routed through an OZEV-authorised installer, with your part being the evidence — the tenancy or lease, and an eligible vehicle — supplied along the way. Two practical consequences follow. First, raise the grant before any figures are agreed, so your eligibility is confirmed honestly at quote stage rather than renegotiated after the work is booked. Second, insist that the quote shows the price both before and after the grant: a discount you cannot see is a discount you cannot check.
The deadline, and a note on the kit
Both live schemes run to 31 March 2027 on GOV.UK’s published timetable. No extension has been announced, and we will not speculate on one. If you are eligible and were planning a charger regardless, doing it inside the window is the safer course — with the caveat that a charger bought purely because a deadline loomed is a purchase made backwards. The car, the parking and the supply come first.
One reassurance on the kit itself: you do not need to hunt for a special “grant-compatible” premium charger. Every new home chargepoint sold in Great Britain has been required to have smart functionality since 30 June 2022, so scheduling and app control are the legal baseline on any compliant unit. What a proper home EV charger installation involves — the survey, the dedicated circuit, the network notification — is the same job with or without a grant attached, and choosing between charger speeds is covered in our honest look at 7kW vs 22kW home charging.
Where to start
If you rent, own a flat, or only have on-street parking, the grant is real money — up to £500 a socket until 31 March 2027 — and checking your eligibility costs nothing. Tell us your situation when you request a free quote or call 0204 547 1892 and we will confirm honestly whether a grant applies to you before any figures are agreed; if it does not, you will hear that plainly too. The job itself, from survey to certification, is set out on our EV chargers page. And if you are weighing a charger up alongside panels, our Surrey page sets out how solar, batteries and EV chargers for Surrey homes fit together as one system rather than three separate purchases.